Whenever I get to it, I always find that it is worth listening to To the Best of Our Knowledge on NPR - with their orange/green, sometimes second tier, and always human look at just about any topic under the sun.

Most recently, they have a program on Deep Time, including a story about the ECOlogical Calendar which helps us connect with the natural cycles and the universe. It is beautiful, meaningful, and useful, and exactly what I have been looking for, both for myself and as a culture-change themed gift for others.

I also seen they have a five-part series on science and religion, which I haven’t heard yet but plan to find time for (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).

I participated in the Northwest Earth Institute National Gathering over the last five days. Joanna Macy was the guest of honor, and we did a number Deep Ecology group activities - going through the cycle of gratitude, grief, shift in view, and engagement.

I thoroughly enjoy these activities, especially as they - as the Big Mind process and other practices - help us shift views and make our identity more inclusive, porous and fluid. We have a direct and visceral experience of being not separate from the Earth and Universe, or from past and future generations. Everything is here/now. It is all a seamless fluid whole.

For the Double Circle (aka Seventh Generation) activity, I was a human being from 2205 - living in a life-centered civilization some time after the Great Turning. I listened to a succession of human beings from today, 2005, speaking about how it was for them to be alive in these times - with the destruction and denial all around, and how they find strength to go on.

Then I spoke, expressing my profound gratitude for them and what they are doing as part of the Great Turning. I asked them to remember that their intentions and work as part of the Great Turning are supported by all of life - by the Earth as a whole and all past and future generations.

It became clear that all the problem which face humans in 2005 (and several years before and after), are all very insubstantial. The toxins and weapons are of course very substantial and real, but the problems all arise from confusion in the human mind. They are all made by the human mind, and can be unmade by the human mind. They could go > poof <>poof<>poof< at any moment.